Vineland Summary

Vineland tells the story of the people surrounding Frenesi Gates, a one-time sixties radical who turns government informer and goes into hiding, abandoning her husband and young daughter. Pynchon moves fluidly in his narrative from character to character and between the time settings of 1970 and 1984, describing a loosely-knit group of people whose lives are greatly affected as Frenesi passes through them.

The novel opens in the fictional Northern California town of Vineland, where...

Vineland Study Guide

Thomas Pynchon Biographies (3)

The American novelist Thomas Pynchon (born 1937) is best known for V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, and Mason & Dixon, complex fictions noted for their encyclopedic erudi...
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Thomas Pynchon 's willingness to address the most important cultural and social issues makes him an important writer. He depicts the plight of contemporary humanity caught in, rather than sustained by...
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Thomas Pynchon 's ancestral roots go deep into the soil of America--an appropriate genealogy for a writer whose overriding concern in his fictional project is the construction of "America" and the nec...
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